to think if you can deliver and collect your children from school...

[NoseyNooNoo]

I have ended up class rep this year (how did that happen?) so I am now lumbered with trying to persuade parents to volunteer for about 50 sessions helping out at school this year. I fully appreciate that there are few mums who have no job and no children at home and to be honest it's no skin off my nose if the sessions aren't filled but what is getting my goat is the number of women who have said 'Don't you realise some of us work some full time?' in a some what patronising tone.

AIBU to be annoyed by this because a) I do actually have a job myself but as I am self-employed this in not necessarily evident and b) if they are there at 9am and 3pm it is unlikely that they work full-time either.

Thanks for letting me off load!

[redlac]

hopefully they have helped in the way that you don't assume what other peoples work patterns are!

[NoseyNooNoo]

I haven't back peddled at all. I have been consistent throughout. People have volunteered since I wrote the OP. I did not have the ability to look into the future when I wrote the OP.

Anyway, I'm think I'm done with it. I have received a range of responses which have helped in different ways.

Thank you.

[kittycatlove]

I think there is a bit of back peddling going on here !
BTW it was the bit about "It makes me smile to myself " that I thought odd .

So now lots of people have suddenly volunteered- so what was the thread about again

[NoseyNooNoo]

I have not made assumptions. I don't care whether they work. I don't care whether they volunteer and I have not directly asked anyone to do anything. If almost every parent has contacted me to offer to do a lot irrespective of their commitments then perhaps most people think my note asked suffiently nicely and in an unpressured way.

And as for Curryspice - well she has demonstrated to me how those mums may be thinking which is informative. I have learned from it and I know to avoid them now. If that makes me 'a wee bit bonkers' so be it and perhaps now they won't bother to approach me again so it's a positive outcome for me and a positive outcome for them.

[kittycatlove]

Agree with Oblomov and frankly your last post to Curryspice make you seem a wee bit bonkers.
Lots of people do shifts and arrange their lives to fit around their DC.
You dont sound like you really want to do this or really have the sort of personality to deal with it.

[Oblomov]

"Unlikely". Well Op, you have been proved wrong on that count, as this thread has shown.
I don't think you have come across very well on this thread. Maybe you didn't come across very well to the mums either.
I think you may need to work on this.

[sheeesh]

YABU I work full time and because there is no-one else to collect my DD, I drop DD1 at school, drop DD2 at nursely, start work at 09.30, then take my lunch hour at 3pm so that I can do the school run for DD1, pick up DD2 from nursely and drop both DD off at my mum's. Then I go back to work until 6pm

So your point, "AIBU to be annoyed by this because a) I do actually have a job myself but as I am self-employed this in not necessarily evident and b) if they are there at 9am and 3pm it is unlikely that they work full-time either."

is based on short sighted assumptions about people when you don't actually have a clue about their lives or responsibilities.

Fine to be annoyed but don't kid yourself that you're not speaking from a position of ignorance.

[havinhoops1974]

YANBU

theres never any need to be patronising or rude if your asking politely, just comfort yourself that their clearly pretty unpleasant so not love lost there...

[OhdearNigel]

"b) if they are there at 9am and 3pm it is unlikely that they work full-time either."

Erm, it's called shift work

[NoseyNooNoo]

CurrySpice - you seem amazingly capable of misreading my OP on multiple points. I said 'a few mums' which would make them the minority. At no point did I say 'great number of women' but as it happens the great majority of mums have offered to help to such an extent that most are doing about a quarter of what they volunteered for.

You really make me laugh. When I see the rudest woman now I think of you. It makes me smile to myself. Thank you.

[CurrySpice]

So op there was nothing at all, anywhere at any time, to make this great number of snotty women think that you were assuming they didn't work. Yet that's how your op and your title comes across, and how all of these women, completely independently, all took it as well? Really?

Odd that they reacted the same isn't it?

But of course it must be all of them they had a problem, not you

[cory]

The rudeness of these parents is deplorable. But it is quite likely they have felt pressurised in the past and feel guilty about their inability to commit. I always used to feel like that, that there was a suggestion that if you only cared enough about your children's education everything else would automatically give. Though I would not have been rude.

[Blueberties]

It's great to help out but in the end I had a rule, reading rota only or fundraising.
Glueing and sticking they can naff off.

I used to run a major sports activity for hundreds of children, it was almost like a voluntary full time job. Apart from the weekly admin work the activity itself was three hours on a Friday night and parents would come to watch. Every other week we'd asked them to stand up and hold a tape measure, usher a team round the events etc.

I kid you not, if we were short handed some parents wouldn't even help when they were there watching anyway. They would sit there self-righteously saying it wasn't their turn while a bunch of other mums and dads were running themselves ragged giving their children an amazing sporting experience. Pathetic.

[Oblomov]

Why do we have to even help out at schools ? Why is it even seen as the done thing ? It never used to be. My parents were never asked. They might go to one annual event, christmas play etc.
But we are asked to go in all the time. And its not just for fund raising events. I am well aware that the Gov has cut grants, and that out PTA now has to make up quite a shortfall. o.k. there's a recession everywhere, we all know thta.
But we are asked to go in, to help out on walking to the church, walking to the museum, helping out on school trips, reading days, making a kite days.
I'm sure my parents weren't asked to go in for things like that.
Its as if it is now assumed that we want to be with our kids 24/7 and being involved with everyhting they do at school. Well actually I don't. And I think that many parents don't either. I drop him off. He's yours to look after. Thats what we pay you for. All I want to know is : is he happy, is he doing o.k.. Other than that I don't know why we have to be so involved.
So far this year we've already been invited in to 'meet the teacher', a school trip, reading days, IT help day.
Even if I had the time, I don't want to go into school every other week. Thats not a crime, you know. I know teachers are patient, well trained. Let them get on with what they are good at.
If you love being around kids and want to go to every 'make a .... day' then great. I don't want to. And before you ask, yes I am interested in what my son does, but I don't have to participate in it all. he goes to karate aswell you know. I don't. I don't go to Beaver camp either, funnily enough. Doesn't mean I'm not interested in him or what he gets up to.

[Joolyjoolyjoo]

Hmm- I've been thinking about this thread and realised that no-one has ever come and asked me to help out with anything at the school

I'm now worried that I must be looked upon as unsuitable (unstable?) by both WOHPs and SAHPs alike! Sigh. I'm going to be paranoid now, OP, unless I get a nice note in a schoolbag. Soon. (although of course I would stammer, go red and apologise about not being able to take time off work...)

[NoseyNooNoo]

CurrySpice - I made no assumptions - I said it was unlikely. I even put it in italics to denote that I accepted that it was a generalisation.

However, this thread has been extremely helpful to me because it has shown that whatever and however I say something, some people will choose to read alternative messages into it.

As it happens all the slots are filled now.

Minipie - only one person has mentioned it being mums only because I explained in the OP that I asked parents and then I clarified that my note was addressed to mums and dads. However this does demonstrate how some of the mums at the school gate may have misread my note in the same way that you have.

Do you think they'll think I'm patronising if I speak s-l-o-w-l-y to them in words of 1 syllable to ensure they understand what I'm saying?

[FairhairedandFrustrated]

I am there every day to drop my kids at school.

I am there 3/5 days to pick them up.... two of those evenings I go back to work when DH comes home.

I had to resign from PTA as meetings were on one of my work nights - I remain on the BOG because they try to have the meetings on a night I don't work.

So to others I may seem like I am at home all day doing nothing, but in fact I manage my childcare around my working hours.

[Northernlurker]

I get very narked if asked to volunteer at school. I work full time and I do stuff at church. School can take care of itself. Ime btw the people asking don't seem to realise that some parents work - especially not mums of younger dcs. One woman practically had to get out the holy water and cross herself after I refused to volunteer at the sodding school fete. If I got a note I would ignore it - unless you'd done something else to annoy me and I was feeling feisty.......

[CurrySpice]

Obviously no excuse to be snotty

Equally no excuse to make assumptions about other people's lives

[SardineQueen]

So people got a note in a school bag and then went up to OP in the playground to say "some of us work full time you know!".

That is even weirder.

[fluffythevampirestabber]

And Sardine - she didn't go up to them, she put a note in their bags, and it all depends on how the note was worded.

For example, every year we used to get a note from the DS's school that said "your voluntary contribution is now due"

That used to have steam coming out my ears every fucking year and every year I wrote in red pen "if my contribution is voluntary it cannot be due. That is a contradiction in terms"
IYSWIM?

[fluffythevampirestabber]

Thing is, if I've had a number of requests to help out, plus the sneering I'm getting from the other bitches mums at the gates for being separated, and the looking down on me and stares, and whispering behind hands that oh isn't my stbx fantastic and amn't I lucky no I'm fucking not you irritating smug arse, and I've been up half the night writing an essay for uni and then someone asks me to help I might snap a bit more than I usually would.

Does that make sense?

[SardineQueen]

Seems that the answer is, to avoid upsetting people, schools should not under any circumstances ask parents to volunteer for anything ever.

That's that one solved.

[SardineQueen]

And it's not as if she's going up to them saying "you don't work full time". She is going up to them and saying "would you be able to do some volunteering to help out at the school". Surely the answer "no, sorry" would be quite sufficient

[SardineQueen]

I must admit that if I see someone every day at drop-off and pick-up I assume they don't work full time. Obviously some of the time I will be wrong, but I don't think it's a bizarre assumption to make.